His Hands
by Heliopoetica
Summary: After it had happened I snuck out of my tent and showered for what felt like ages. I scrubbed until my skin was raw but his hands still lingered.


Warning: Mentions of rape and slight self harm.  
>AN: The whole alien invasion thing just didn't sit right with me. So I wrote this. Any and all mistakes are my own.

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><p>His hands are always on me. I feel them when I walk, when I talk, when I laugh, when I dance. I feel them clamp down on my mouth to silence me. I feel them grab hold of my wrists to stop me from fighting. I feel them ghosting over my body, taking it from me. His hands took so many things from me and I've fought so hard to get them back.<p>

His hands took my words. After it happened I didn't speak for days. I didn't trust my voice, it had failed me. When I had tried to scream nothing had come out. There was only silence and his hands. When he was gone all that was left was bruised wrists, drying blood and a deafening echo of silent shouts. So I kept quiet, afraid that when I opened my mouth I would scream and never be able to stop. But that didn't happen. After being quiet I was told by one of the other camp counselors that I was slacking off during our routines and I had to shape up. The first words I spoke were part of a simple cheer. But _my_ words were still gone. I could repeat things said to me, I could answer simple questions, but I couldn't speak for myself anymore. My ability to put words to my feelings was taken by his hands and so, in effect, he took my feelings too. She gave them both back to me. When I didn't have my words she lent me hers. When I couldn't feel she felt for me. She helped me to reconnect emotions with words and the first time she told me she loved me, I understood what she meant. And when I said it back to her, I hope she understood that I felt it and meant it.

His hands took my innocence. What he did to me changed me in a way that can't be undone. When I woke up the following morning after one hour of restless sleep I knew that I had become someone new, that I had lost something I could never get back. Since my words were nowhere to be found and I was too young to really understand I was unable to name what that something was. Now I know that it was my innocence. It was my loss of innocent that drove me to my almost obsessive compulsion with Christmas. The entire essence of Christmas was enough to trick me into feeling innocent. On some level I always knew it was all bullshit but it was all I had. I've done many things that to the outside world seem childish, but to me they are things and ways to feel some of that innocence again and to honor the child I had been. When we snuggle up on her couch and she puts on Lady And The Tramp I know she does it for that innocent child that never got to grow up. I grew up, but the child I was didn't. He took her and I became someone new and I'm learning to be okay with that.

His hands took my body. After it had happened I snuck out of my tent and showered for what felt like ages. I scrubbed until my skin was raw but his hands still lingered. When camp was over and I got home I tried to cut them away but that just covered them in blood. When I got a little older I tried to replace his hands with other hands but all that accomplished was to give me a reputation. Alcohol helped a bit so I partied whenever I got the chance. It was at one of those parties she first put her hands on me.

She had pulled me up the stairs and we were standing in a darkened hallway, my back against the wall. After a couple of moments she simply took a step forward, placed her hands on my hips and pressed her lips against mine. It took a moment for me to understand what was happening but when I kissed her back she started to move her hands up and down the sides of my body, soothing the painful ache that was the presence of his hands. The kiss got heated and we stumbled into a vacated bedroom, the back of my legs hit the bed and we both fell onto it. When she started to remove my top I stopped her, broke the kiss and told her that we had to talk. We didn't sleep together that night. Instead she became the first person to know about what had happened to me. Back then I couldn't really voice what had prompted me into telling her, there was just something in her touch. Something in her touch made me break the promise I had made myself to never tell anyone. Something in her touch told me I could trust her. Now I know that that something was her body telling my body that they belonged together.

We didn't sleep together that night and we didn't sleep together for a long time after that. But her hands kept on soothing the ache his hands had left. Now it's more of a dull throb instead of a searing acidic burn. Except for when I'm with her. When I'm with her there is only me, her and her hands. Her hands that helped me reconnect my words with my feelings, my feelings with my thoughts and my thoughts with my body. Thoughts that he had taken from me.

His presence was always most noticeable in my head. All the things he said were always on repeat in there. When everything else was quiet I could hear his heavy breathing as clearly as when it happened. He invaded all my thoughts so I did the only thing that could possibly help – I stopped thinking. Every ounce of energy that didn't go to walking, talking, dancing went to keep myself from thinking, to keep my mind blank and free from him. I wasn't the smartest person before his invasion and this didn't make me smarter. People started calling me stupid and idiot and sure, it hurt but it hurt a lot less than thinking. She stood up for me when I couldn't. She helped me with my homework, she let me cheat off of her on tests, she made sure I didn't fall too far behind on my grades. She couldn't prevent me from falling back on actual knowledge, but she is helping me catch up now that I'm slowly turning my thoughts back on. She took me to see a therapist who specialized in helping people like me. She came with me per my request and held my hand the entire time. Now I know how to better handle his presence and I trust my thoughts again, I refuse to let him rule them.

Her hands helped me dig a grave for his hands and that are now helping me fill it in. Her hands that still shoot a wondrous electricity through me whenever we touch, reassuring me over and over again that we belong together. With her hand in mine, him and his hands are slowly but surely leaving me and becoming a thing of the past. With her hand in mine I look to the future, a future that belongs to us. Me and her, me and my soul mate.


End file.
